A Discovery of Turtles
lessons about listening to Spirit
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It’s late summer, and tasks in the garden include dividing and planting iris. I used to have all kinds of beautiful, colorful irises in the garden of my previous house, including Dutch, Siberian, Japanese, German, and more. Now, I limit myself to our native iris versicolor. It grows wild at the pond's edge, but I have also planted it in my garden borders. While I love the native species, I’ve longed for a new cultivar called Purple Flame. In the spring, when this iris starts to poke through the earth, the new shoots of this marvelous variety emerge a deep purple color rather than the usual green. After a long gray-brown winter, any saturated color is deeply appreciated in spring.
I went to a specialty nursery in May to get some Purple Flame, but they were sold out. Bummer. However, in late July, I found some on the clearance bench, 50% off. A perfectly healthy plant, but iris, when not in bloom, doesn't look like much, and by this time, the rich purple color had faded back to the usual green.
I kept my prize well-watered and held off planting until the weather cooled off a bit. This week, I was ready to divide the iris rhizomes that were now crowded in the pot and plant two good-sized clumps of my much sought-after Purple Flame Iris.
I knew exactly where I wanted to plant my iris: in front of the culver’s root and slightly behind the Purple Haze Agastache and Pow Wow Berry Coneflowers. I removed the layer of bark mulch, plunged my shovel into the ground, lifted the clump of soil, and got a surprise I wasn’t expecting. I had inadvertently disturbed a nest of painted turtle hatchlings in their underground nest. There were about half a dozen, and they looked just like the one in the first photo above, which was taken last April.
The poor little turtles were in a panic. I immediately covered the nest with the dirt I had removed and replaced the mulch layer. I hoped they would settle back down and feel calm and safe again.
I planted the clump of Iris about a foot further back, a bit too close to the culver’s root, but I can always move the iris rhizomes again next fall.
I really shouldn't have been so surprised by finding baby turtles. We have a large pond on our property near the gardens. I see turtles throughout the spring and summer laying eggs all the time. Many, if not most, of those nests get predated by skunks, raccoons, foxes, and even occasionally coyotes. It’s rather heartbreaking to see all the nests disrupted and the empty eggshells scattered around them throughout the summer. But some of them make it, as evidenced by the little guy I photographed in April and the nest I uncovered this week.
The turtles in the nest this week were at least as big as the one I encountered in April. In the spring, I usually move them to the pond edge as they are the most vulnerable during the trek from their nest to the water. Surviving that journey gives them a good chance of living twenty or thirty years in the pond.
For a split second, I debated if I should move these babies to the pond. But then I thought they’re perfectly big and robust enough to dig their way out of this nest and go to the pond right now, but they haven’t done that, and Mother Nature knows best. So I tucked them back into the earth.
A little research informed me that if the turtles hatch early enough in the season, they will emerge and find the nearest water source. However, they will dig deep underground if they hatch later in the season. Then, when it is freezing, their body systems slow down, and they will over-winter and come to the surface in the spring. They are perfectly fine underground and eat their egg yolk sack for nutrition.
It’s still pretty warm here; we’re weeks away from freezing. So will the baby turtles emerge, or will they overwinter? I don’t know, but they do, and I know better than to meddle. I've seen both, but on average, I see more baby turtles emerge in spring rather than fall.
Turtle Teachings
Whenever I have encounters in nature, I’m aware that they are sent to teach me something.
Turtles have many symbolic associations. They correspond to The Hermit (perfect for Virgo season; see last week’s essay.) They offer wise ideas about protection, going within, home being with you always, being comfortable swimming in emotions, the ability to go deep, rest, and all of those qualities contributing to longevity.
This particular encounter yielded wisdom about something different than the usual turtle associations. This lesson was about sudden disruption.
What happens when we, like the baby turtles, have our safe, comfortable, quiet, predictable life suddenly shaken and threatened by external forces whose power and ferocity outweigh our small, vulnerable situations?
Where do we turn when war, economic collapse, disease, natural disaster, or tyranny overturns our simple lives and threatens our very existence?
Discovering the turtle’s nest reminded me of how vulnerable we all are and how easily we can be overwhelmed by something outside our control.
Ultimately, this is a spiritual question. Where do you turn when you “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” so that you “fear no evil”?
Timing is Everything
The second, turtle teaching, is about timing.
I inadvertently disrupted the timing of the turtles’ emergence. Thankfully, I recognized this immediately and restored them without any permanent adverse effects.
But this led me to thinking about timing in our lives. Knowing when to move forward, when to stay put and when to dig in and retreat is an important kind of wisdom.
Recognizing when we are being pushed out or into situations before we are fully ready is important. Knowing when we are fully developed in a skill, relationship, or inner healing, is key to successfully emerging into a new life pattern. Also knowing when we are not yet ready to face certain challenges, responsibilities, old traumas or wounds is equally as important.
The insight necessary to know whether you are ready to leave the safe and familiar behind and expand your horizons in any area of life is something important to develop.
The turtles know these things instinctively. They don’t need to ponder their readiness. They don’t agonize over the decision to emerge now in late August or over winter in the ground until spring. They just know.
Our intuitive sense combined with whatever instinctual vestiges remain in us helps us make those decisions. Our instinct in automatic but our intuitive function can be developed and when it is it can help us make better decisions about how to move forward in our lives.
The critical question I learned from the turtles is knowing whether it is better to move forward or stay put for a while longer. I think this question has a multitude of situations where it can be applied and by pausing to intuit the answer we can give ourselves some really good advice at critical junctures.
Listening to Spirit
The spirit of the Divine is always speaking to us, particularly through the natural world. I encourage you to listen, to think, to ask questions whenever you have any kind of encounter in nature. Simple things like finding a feather, seeing a particular animal, catching a glimpse of an unusually shaped cloud or a meteor all hold deep wisdom and often have a message for you. Don’t ever think it’s “just a coincidence” especially if it feels meaningful. That’s your intuition kicking in and helping you hear what Spirit has to say to you.
How do you listen to Spirit in nature? What have you heard, what have you learned? How does developing your intuition make you more sensitive to hearing the still, small voice of the Divine?
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Get Ready for Virgo Season
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This was a lovely read and taught me things about turtles I didn’t know. Several years ago I became a kayaker and through the many hours I’ve spent on various waterways, I’ve developed a deep fondness for turtles. Seeing them lined up on logs, sunning themselves on a warm day, never fails to lift my heart.
There was one thing you wrote that particularly spoke to me - “Don’t ever think it’s “just a coincidence” especially if it feels meaningful. That’s your intuition kicking in and helping you hear what Spirit has to say to you.” Thank you for this important reminder. Sometimes we get so caught up in our heads that it’s easy to forget this.
All I can add to this wonderful post is ‘Amen!’
2 months ago I discovered a big red slider and a little mud turtle laying eggs next to each other. Having failed to properly protect turtle nests too many times before, I put a folding table on top of/across the two nests. We removed the table 5 days ago. The ground was undisturbed. The slider eggs are due to hatch at 60 days and the mud turtle at 75 days. Your amazingly appropriate essay will prevent us from being heartbroken if they decide to stay underground until spring. Thank you!